Audio: Christopher Hitchen’s Favorite Authors

In the June 2011 issue of Vanity Fair, Christopher Hitchens discusses the deterioration of his speech as a result of his battle against cancer. “To a great degree,” he writes, “the loss of such a thing can’t be imagined until it occurs.” The ordeal awakens him to the importance of the spoken voice to writing, and he notes that many of his favorite writers are also among the world’s best talkers. Among them: the poets T. S. Eliot and W. H. Auden and the musician and poet Leonard Cohen. Above, Eliot reads his classic poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and below, Cohen sings his ballad, “If It Be Your Will,” and Auden reads his poem, “As I Walked Out One Evening.”